Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine

My research is nutrition and reproduction in peripartum dairy cow.
Main topics are the study on earlier resumption of ovarian activity and uterus involution after calving by enhancing energy and metabolic status during late gestation, and the study on the effect of nutritional status of mother cows on the growth and metabolism of their calves.
During the late gestation, almost mother cows cannot eat enough feed because of growth of fetus. In addition, metabolism of mother cows change from anabolism to catabolism (insulin resistance) for fetal growth and preparation for onset of lactation after calving.
Severe decrease of feed intake and catabolism of mother cows affect to lower growth and metabolism of their calves and the occurrence of several diseases, decrease of milk yield and delayed recovery of reproductive function in mother cows.
Therefore, I detect the metabolic status of good performance cows from blood property, and consider the improvement method for low performance cows.
However, even if I define the characteristics of blood property in good and/or low performance cows, farmer cannot use this indexes on farm.
Thus, I also think some indexes that can be judged on farm, such as rumen condition (see Fig3) and rumen fill score.

• Relationship between the metabolic status of peripartum dairy cows and the successful calving and recovery of reproductive function after calving.
• Effect of the supplemental feeding to dairy cows on metabolic status, reproductive performance, and their calf growth.
• Clarification of the nutritional status of dams determining the metabolic disposition and ovarian reserve of female calves.